I have a sad trombone button on the home screen of my phone. Were I to meet Mitt, I would be completely incapable of not using it. Even if it meant getting my ass kicked by a washed up politician._________________“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

With the fiscal cliff looming for the United States, some Republican members of Congress said today they are ready to break a long standing pledge not to raise taxes.

"The only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece. And Republicans should put revenue on the table," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on ABC's "This Week."

Graham's comments followed those by another Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who said last week he'll no longer abide by the pledge.

"I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge," he said in a local interview.
He got support today from House member Peter King, another Republican from New York. "I agree entirely with Saxby Chambliss -- a pledge he signed 20 years ago, 18 years ago is for that Congress," King said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added, "The world is changed and the economic situation is different."

This growing chorus is about the pledge that Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist has gotten hundreds of Republicans to sign. But in an interview with ABC News, Norquist says it's just a few deserters. "The people who have made a commitment to their constituents are largely keeping it," he said. "The fact is there is more support for both protecting the rates, you saw the Republican leader in the house say rates are non-negotiable, and he also talked about revenue coming from growth."

But President Obama has said rates will go up for the wealthy. There could be some political cover for Republicans if the country actually goes over the cliff. All the Bush era tax cuts would expire, including those for the wealthy. Congress could then vote to actually reduce taxes for everyone expect the rich. Therefore, they wouldn't technically raise taxes and violate Norquist's pledge.

But Nordquist said he doesn't think the public would buy those political moves, and he also doesn't think the country will actually go over the cliff. "I think we'll continue the tax cuts. Not raise taxes $500 billion. Obama made the correct decision (by extending the Bush tax cuts) two years ago," Norquist told us.

Leading Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin also said he believes a deal is possible now that the Thanksgiving holiday break is over. "We can solve this problem," he said on "This Week," adding: "There's no excuse. We're back in town."

Grover norquist is the tiniest, wart-infested, most shrivelled dick in a communitarian enclave of stumpy penises. He is legitimately one of the most ridiculous, most noxious, and most toxic prairie ideologues his side of Yoo. I am fine with either outcome: republicans remain cowed by his neoliberal demand for anti-tax purity and ride with him into sociopolitical oblivion, or causally toss him aside into the dustbin, for the sake of their own survival.

The US House of Representatives passed a controversial bill this morning that would grant 55,000 new visas to foreigners who graduate from US universities with science, technology, engineering or math degrees (so-called STEM graduates). The vote comes just two days after the Obama administration said it was opposed to the bill.

The bill, called the STEM Jobs Act, passed on a 245-139 vote mostly along party lines, with about two dozen Democrats joining Republicans in supporting the bill, according to a report from the blog The Hill. Most Democrats opposed the bill, though, because the STEM Jobs Act adds the 55,000 new visas at the cost of a diversity-visa program that grants the same number of visas to countries with historically low levels of immigration to the US.

About half of the diversity visas would go to African immigrants, and some minority Democratic representatives today accused the bill of being shortsighted or even racist. Shutting down the main program that provides visas to African immigrants "is racist, if not in its intent, then certainly in its effect," said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), according to The Hill report. "Republicans have just received a historically low vote from minorities in the past election, yet they want to create an immigration system that gives visas with one hand while taking visas away from minorities with the other."

Republican advocates of the bill have presented it as a straightforward jobs program. "For each person we welcome to America with one of these high degrees, we create jobs, net jobs," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). "We create opportunity for expansion of the kinds of businesses that in fact Americans are prepared to work in, but often we do not have enough engineers, scientists, or math professionals."

As for the racism charge, Issa said he was "personally insulted" that it had come up, and said that STEM graduates are a diverse group. More than 12,000 African citizens are now studying in STEM fields in US schools that could benefit from the program, he noted. When opponents noted that would still result in far fewer visas going to Africans, Issa accused Democrats of "looking at the numbers rather than the merit."

In any case, the bill doesn't have much chance of passing. It might not even come up for debate in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Is it just me or does it seem rather odd that people would rather have 55,000 visas distributed to countries with low immigration levels than distributed to people who could potentially bring wealth and industrial expertise to the US.

I don't quite get the whole racism thing about it either because they say it's for countries with low levels of immigration then say it's the main program that provides African's with visas. Also the fact it's not only white people who have degrees in mathematics, technology, science or engineering._________________Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile.